AMAZON KINDLE

AMAZON KINDLE

The latest nerdy toy on the block is the Amazon's Kindle 2, but its not only for nerds, the ladies are going gah-gah over it. Its a nifty gadget that does for books what the Apple iPod does for music. Kindle2 is a battery powered tree friendly ebook reader, that simulates a page of a book, but its much lighter and thinner than a book, (depending on the book you reading of course). It can store some 4000 books, documents and magazines on its SD card (subject to available space).

Like the Apple iPod connects to iTunes, so does Kindle connect to Amazon via 3G wireless to download complete books at the fraction of the printed version in mere minutes. It has inbuilt PDF support and connects to the Internet wirelessly to access the quarter million books currently available for download. Apparently Kindle2 is also MP3 savvy, but I will best stick to my iPod. Kindle is in a sense is a very large iPod with 3G wireless. My trusty iPod can do it all, so who needs wireless when the iPod interfaces with the aggregator. Kindle2 has an auto-rotating screen and can rotate its image from portrait to landscape much like the latest touch screen cellphones and GPS unit do (my samsung omnia), but it has no colour, only 16 shades of gray. It is boasted that it makes text look clearer and images sharper but I'm almost certain the Kindle3 will be in colour. Seriously, who wants to read a glossy full colour men's magazine in 16 shades of grey. Neither will the ladies appreciate a chocolate or fresh cream cake ad or even a sexy underwear ad in black and white.

I'm not knocking it, I love this device because I see Kindle technology as "freedom of write" like "freedom of speech" meaning that anyone and everyone can publish their own books. Save it PDF format (encryped cf course), email it to some Kindle owners top roof read, edit and Voila! No need for type setting, imagesetting, lithgraphic artwork, printers, publisher nor distrubutor and warehousing, caws you can brand it and sell it yourself via the internet. Kindle has cetainly spedup vanity publishing (self-publish) tremendously and authors can now finally gain financial success and not just settle for the royalties.

Anyway, the Kindle2 has a mate called Kindle DX, its has a larger screen, both have built in text-to-speech processors, (like Text-Aloud computerised voices) and can read back articles and pages when driving in your car.

I wonder it it will impact on the sale of school books, considering the cost of the Kindle may exceed the cost of all the books in the first place. However, its time to go techno, so all you book worms.... go on, go donate all your books to the local library.